The Headmaster
by Myrrat-Sade
Summary: An ambition realized. A school destroyed. A Headmaster remembers.


The Headmaster

Eyes wide, the two children watched the old man as he swept past them. He was lost in thought, apparently unaware of their attention trained on him.

"Isn't he amazing?" breathed the girl, her voice holding a dreamy quality.

The boy said nothing, but turned his dark eyes to her, studying her face. He wanted to impress her as much as this old man did.

Suddenly feeling her friend's gaze, she turned to look at him.

"I want to be a professor when I grow up," she said.

The boy grimaced inwardly. Already, he knew he didn't like the children in his classes.

"We can both be professors," said the girl, as if she'd made up her mind. "And then you can be Headmaster."

"Ok," said the boy. "But I'm not wearing weird sparkly purple robes like he does."

"Ok," agreed the girl.

~SSSSSSSSSSSS~

"Headmaster," asked he boy, a little timidly. He was not used to speaking to adults, at least not adults who regarded him seriously as the tall, white-haired did now. "May I ask you a question?"

The Headmaster peered over his half-moon glasses at the boy.

"You just have!" he announced merrily, "But I'll let you ask another, too. Snape, is it? A second year, if I'm not mistaken?"

"Yes sir," said the boy, swallowing hard, color rising in his pale cheeks as he glanced sidelong at his friend, who nodded her encouragement. "Sir, ah… how does one become a Hogwarts Headmaster?"

The old man's eyes twinkled, which was a trick he'd learned to do long ago. "Well, my dear boy, you begin by studying very hard and making very high marks. After that, I fear, it's mostly luck! Good luck or bad, depending on whom you ask!"

"Oh," said the boy, maybe just a touch sadly. Luck was not, generally speaking, on his side. "Thank you, sir."

As the two children walked away, the old man cocked his head to one side. "Well, the Hat got the ambition right, anyway," he muttered to himself. Maybe a bit louder than he'd intended, because the boy turned and shot him a fierce look.

~SSSSSSSSSSSS~

"If _I _were Headmaster, I wouldn't let anyone get away with pranks like this!" the boy fumed, pacing back and forth in front of his friend, who lounged on the bottom step but one of a flight of stone stairs.

"Sev, calm down. You're fine. It was just a harmless prank," sighed Lily, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

"It's disrespectful! It disrespects fellow students, the professors, the very institution!" spat the young man, wheeling and stalking in front of his friend again. "And while that time it was harmless, they go a little farther every time. That potion was unstable! It could have… "

As he ranted on, a gaggle of younger students streamed by. One of them, a thin, reedy girl stopped and blinked at him owl-like, her eyes wide and staring blindly into him. "If what you seek should happen… it will bring the school's downfall…" she said in an unsteady voice.

"What?" snapped the young man, rounding on her.

"I… uh, did you say something?" asked the younger child, still blinking but now focused on Severus.

"Go to class," he said slowly, turning his back on the girl, who was already scurrying after her peers, her head tucked down over her books.

"If you ever _are_ Headmaster, you're going to have to be nicer to the students," remarked Lily.

Severus just snorted.

~SSSSSSSSSSSS~

The boy lay on his back under his curtained canopy bed, shooting green and gold sparks from the tip of his wand.

"If I could become Headmaster, maybe then she'd forgive me," he muttered.

The sparks showered down like wishing stars.

~SSSSSSSSSSSS~

The Dark Lord looked deep into his eyes, and read him like a length of wrung-out parchment.

"I see your ambitions," the Dark Lord breathed. "Wealth. Power. Revenge on your childhood tormentors. A… a girl, a pretty little thing, but rather bland if you ask me! Every man wants for the same things." He laughed, an ugly sound, and then he went deeper.

"And what is this, Severus? To… to lead our beloved Alma Mater? Oh I think not. I shall give you much greater things. Put aside silly childish ambitions."

"Yes, my Lord," he breathed.

The searing pain in his arm, when it came, washed away the old wish, along with half his sanity and the contents of his stomach.

~SSSSSSSSSSSS~

"Oh, and one more thing, Severus," said the old man, his voice hard and not at all affable despite the conversational words.

"What, Headmaster?" he snapped. His head hurt, from anxiety and terror and shame. Terror for Lily, and for his own safety. Shame for his position, and his embarrassing weakness.

"If you come to work for me, maybe you'll wind up as Headmaster like you wanted all those years ago."

"I never wanted to be…" he started to say, but maybe that wasn't true. It was so long ago.

The old man's eyes did not twinkle. If anything, they were darker than his own just now.

"If it comes to that, do me a favor," said the old man, "and try not to screw up the school too badly. I've worked long and hard to make it what it is today, and I won't have _you_ damaging it."

~SSSSSSSSSSSS~

"After it's done, they may put you in my position," said the old man. His blackened hand lay on the table between them like the dead thing it was, one skeletal finger pointing right at him.

"Indeed," he agreed. "That would be the Dark Lord's preference, if he controls the Ministry."

"If they do, you must take it. I trust you to know how to run this place the way it needs to be run."

"Aren't you afraid I might 'screw it up,' as you so charmingly put it once?" he asked, sarcasm dripping just a little.

"Not anymore, my dear boy. Do what you can to protect them all."

"I always do, Headmaster."

~SSSSSSSSSSSS~

"We control the Ministry. We control the Wizarding World. We must control Hogwarts," wheezed the snake-like wizard.

"Yes, my Lord," he said.

"I promised you something greater once, and you shall have it, but for now, you may have your old ambition back. Run Hogwarts. Make it a thing of beauty."

"I won't let you down," he said, but he was speaking to another man when he said it.

~SSSSSSSSSSSS~

The students moved in lock-step across the courtyard, and he gazed down on their heads. Slytherins there, grinning insipidly at the Carrows. The Hufflepuffs with their shoulders hunched. The Ravenclaws didn't really seem to notice; learning was learning for them. A few proud Gryffindors, heads held up high.

The student body was shrinking, as more and more children fled, or were taken home by uneasy parents. Most who remained were terrified.

Every little thing that had made this place home was gone now. Gone were the kind eyes, the joy. In their place was only brutality, an ice-cold reign of terror. And this was done on his orders, in his name. He had brought Hogwarts nearly to its knees. He could feel the weight of 1000 years of stone on his shoulders, bearing him down.

He buried his head in his hands.

"If you could see me now," he thought bitterly. "How impressed you'd be."

But she couldn't see him now. Not anymore.


End file.
